


Ode to My Family

by Abby_S



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, Families of Choice, Family Drama, Gen, POV Kevin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1797292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abby_S/pseuds/Abby_S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not about moving on, not like when his dad left out of the blue when he was a kid. It’s not about forgetting what you’ve lost, either, because Kevin knows it’s impossible. It’s about accepting, and it’s about celebrating. It’s about picking up the broken shards of your life, and building something new with them. And that something, it might not be shiny, it might not be perfect. In fact, most of the time, it’s ragged and painful. But it’s yours, and it’s all that counts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ode to My Family

**Author's Note:**

> yet another ficlet that turned into something more. still unbeta'd, sorry about that.
> 
> (for casbunnies on tumblr)

Kevin is finishing his homework when he hears the front door slam. He rolls his eyes and puts down his pen. He’s pretty sure Jody does that just to annoy Mom, and that will never stop making him laugh.

He sits back on his chair and closes his eyes, rubbing his temples with his fingertips. He can already feel the beginnings of a headache; it’s time to call it a day, he decides, standing up on wobbly legs.

He tiptoes downstairs, hoping to surprise Mom and Jody, but the sound of hushed voices stops him from barging into the kitchen.

“I don’t know, Jody…You know I’d like to say yes, but it isn’t only my decision.”

A slight _thump_ and Kevin smiles. Jody and her usual post-shift coffee. He wonders if he should be here, eavesdropping like a kid, but dismisses the thought. He turns eighteen in a week. He guesses it still makes him a kid in the eyes of the law.  

“I know,” Jody is saying. “We should ask Kevin, of course.”

Mom laughs. The sound is still new to Kevin, even after three years. “Well, we should ask him now. _Right_ , Kevin?”

Aw, shit. Busted. Kevin steps in the kitchen, grinning sheepishly. Jody, still in her Sheriff getup, arches an eyebrow in his direction. The Eyebrow of Doom, as Kevin likes to call it. It’s probably made grown men weep.

“Sorry,” Kevin says, even if he’s really not. Mom shakes her head at him, but when she turns to wash her cup, Kevin knows she’s hiding her smile.

Kevin angles toward the fridge, hoping to get a peek inside unnoticed. Of course, having a Sheriff as a stepmother can be aggravating, and he sighs at Jody’s sharp look. Right. Dinner in one hour.

“So, what do you wanted to ask?”

He shoves his hands in his pockets and waits as Mom and Jody share a meaningful look. It’s the kind of silent communication only couples or really close friends can pull out. _You. No, you_. _Okay, then, me._  

“I was wondering how you would feel if we…took in a kid.”

Kevin doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it sure isn’t _this_. He tries to keep his face blank as he gazes between the two women, half-expecting them to guffaw and tell him it’s a joke, but it doesn’t happen.

“Like…a _baby_? Aren’t you a little old for that?”

He feels guilty almost immediately. Mom glares at him, and Jody’s face shatters for barely a second, and yeah. Way to be an asshole. He’d slap himself across the face if he thought it would do some good. They don’t talk about it often, but Kevin knows Jody used to have a husband and a little boy, and that they died two years before she met Mom.

He bites his lip. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

Mom doesn’t even tell him to mind his language, that’s how badly he fu –messed up.

Jody shakes her head and smiles, though it looks a little forced.

“Don’t worry about me. And no, not a baby. In fact, she’s sixteen. I met her on a case.”

Kevin vaguely remembers Jody talking about this runaway kid they’d arrested for shoplifting. She had refused to talk for three days, let alone give them information about her identity. It had turned out that she’d been kidnapped by some sort of cult when she was six, and that she’d fled the home of her captors. He feels a little nauseous just thinking about it. She’s only two years younger than him, and she’s lived through so much shit.

“Anyway,” Jody sighs, “Turns out, her grandparents had raised her before her kidnapping, and they’re both dead now. Apparently, the poor kid doesn’t have any living relative.”

That’s…that’s kinda horrible, actually.

“So…” Kevin says slowly. “Either we take her or she ends up in the system, right?”

Both Mom and Jody nod, and Kevin shrugs.

“Well, then, what’re you waiting for?”

Mom gets this expression like she really wants to hug Kevin, but is holding back because that’s just how they roll. Jody beams at him, and he knows he’s made the right decision.

~*~*~

The girl is _weird_.

Kevin supposes he should stop calling her _the girl_ in his head, since Jody told them that her name is Annie, but that she prefers being called Alex.

But that’s not the point. The point is that Alex just – _doesn’t speak_. It’s not like Kevin expected her to be a ray of sunshine, not with her history. But she’s been sitting on the couch for, like, two hours, staring straight ahead and looking for the world like there’s nothing she’d love more than make a run for it. Kevin is hovering in the kitchen, glancing at her from time to time and wondering what he’s supposed to do.

“ _You should try talking to her_ ” Channing says when he calls her. “ _She’s probably scared shitless of your Moms.”_

Kevin snorts. Channing is terrified of Jody and Linda. He can’t for the life of him figure out why.

“What am I supposed to _say_? ‘Hi, I’m Kevin, sorry your whole family’s dead?’ Come on.”

He can almost hear her roll her eyes. “ _No, idiot. Just…talk to her. Make her feel at home. I don’t know.”_

When he hangs up, he takes a deep breath and goes back in the den. She’s still here, at least. She doesn’t even look at him when he flops down next to her.

“I’m Kevin,” he says, because he can’t figure out what else to do. For a long, awkward minute, he thinks she isn’t even going to acknowledge his existence. But then, she gives a little jerk of the chin, that could look like a half-assed nod if Kevin squinted and tilted his head just right.

It’s something.  

“Alex,” she mumbles, glancing sideways. Kevin smiles encouragingly.

“You okay?”

She shrugs. Then, she shakes her head no, quickly, like she’s afraid someone will tell her off for it.

Kevin doesn’t really know what to say, so he asks her if she wants to play videogames.

She kicks his ass at Super Mario Bros.

~*~*~

As it turns out, Alex and Mom go along pretty well. It kind of surprises Kevin, because Alex is quiet and frowney and overall kind of rude, but Alex seems fascinated by Mom’s job. It kind of grosses Kevin out, to hear mom talk about open-heart surgery when they’re eating, but he grits his teeth and tries to tune out the conversation, because Alex looks less like she wants to bash her own head against the wall.

The problem is, Alex completely ignores Jody’s existence. She acts like she isn’t here, and leaves the room when she talks. At first, Kevin figures it will pass –Jody was the one to arrest Alex in the first place, after all, and Alex probably holds it against her.

But the days go by, turn into weeks, and Alex’s behavior doesn’t change. Kevin sees it hurts Jody, and he knows his Mom does, too. Jody doesn’t let it show, rolls her eyes when Alex locks herself in her room when she comes home, but Kevin has learned to read her. When she’s upset, she keeps touching her small chain bracelet, the one he knows belonged to her son. She’s been doing it a lot, recently, and Kevin is worried.

One day, he can’t stand it anymore, this strain, this tense atmosphere that weighs on their house. He goes to find Alex in her room.

“Why don’t you like Jody?” he asks, crossing his arms and trying to copy Mom’s sternest expression.

Alex just shrugs.

Kevin likes her, he really does, and he gets that she’s been through a lot, but he’s still angry. It must show on his face, because Alex puts down her book and starts picking at a loose thread on her jeans.

“She’s the one who doesn’t like me,” she says.

And Kevin...doesn’t know what to say.

“Why would you think that?”

Alex shrugs and her frown deepens.

“She cried the day I got here. I don’t want –look, I can tell, okay? She doesn’t want me here.”  She snorts and shakes her head. “Just leave it alone.”   

And Kevin _wants_ to tell her, he does. He wants to tell her that before she met Jody, Mom was borderline tyrannical, channeling her loneliness and her regrets into making sure Kevin always was the best everywhere, be it at school or the chess club or his cello class. Sure, when Mom had told him hesitantly that she’d met someone, Jody had emphatically _not_ been what Kevin expected, and he’d had a hard time adjusting. And Jody had been a wreck at the time. Kevin’s not supposed to know it, because Jody always went out of her way to hide it, probably in an attempt to make him feel more comfortable about the whole thing. But Kevin’s spied them more than once, Jody crying silently over a dead husband and a six-year old that she’d never get to see grow up, Mom silently holding her hand and whispering sweet nothings with a softness Kevin didn’t even know she had.

He would like to tell Alex why her arrival in their lives is so earth-shattering for Jody, and that her attitude isn’t helping. But it’s not his story to tell. This story, it’s his Mom’s, it’s Jody’s, and he’s old enough now to understand that while they are a family, there are things he’ll never know about them, about the way they found each other and loved each other. So he just shakes his head and heads back to his room, promising himself that he’ll talk to Jody as soon as he can.

The next morning, Alex’s room is empty.

~*~*~

Jody, Linda and Alex barge in the house at midnight. Jody’s face is bloodied and bruised, and the others don’t fare much better. Kevin has been going out of his mind with worry for five hours, cello is lying on the couch, untouched.

“What happened?” he yells as he takes in Alex’s pale, shell-shocked features. They don’t answer, and Kevin has to stop himself from throwing a goddamn tantrum, he’d been so worried.

But Alex, tough as nails and snarky Alex, looks so very small and traumatized in a way he’s never seen her, not even the first days she spent here, that Kevin shuts his trap and just help Mom carrying her to the couch.

Kevin learns later that Alex had been taken back by her family of creeps and that she’d seen the woman who had raised her get shot by Jody right in front of her, and he has to take a minute to calm down because of how messed up the whole situation is.

And it’s over, he thinks. Alex will never want to talk to Jody ever again, and they’ll have to send her away and he won’t have anyone to play Super Mario Bros with, or snicker at his jokes, or roll their eyes when Mom gets cranky. And it fucking sucks.

As it turns out, he’s wrong.

Kevin doesn’t know how it happens, but two days later, he’s tiptoeing downstairs for a late night snack when he hears someone sobbing. The sobs are painful, wrecked, and Kevin freezes in the doorway of the den, unsure of what to do.

Because Alex is not alone as he expected. She’s sitting on the couch, curled in on herself, and around her, Jody’s arms are a shelter, Jody’s arms are a shield. She’s talking, voice low and soothing, and Alex is nodding from time to time, her whole body shaking with pain and anger.

Sometimes, Kevin used to watch Jody and wonder how one can live through so much horror and survive. How one can feel so much grief without bursting at the seams.

He’d never understood it until now.

He remembers the little things, how Mom smiles at Jody over her morning coffee, fond and intimate. How she and Jody go hiking sometimes, and come back disheveled and laughing like two sheepish teenagers. He thinks of the nights when all three of them huddle on the sofa with a huge bowl of popcorn and watch _House, M.D._ , and Mom rolls her eyes and complains that _this is inaccurate, I mean look at them_ , but she falls silent when she catches Jody’s entranced expression, and sometimes she takes Kevin’s hand and squeezes, like she can’t believe they’re here.

And finally, he gets it.  

It’s not about moving on, not like when his dad left out of the blue when he was a kid. It’s not about forgetting what you’ve lost, either, because Kevin knows it’s impossible. It’s about accepting, and it’s about celebrating. It’s about picking up the broken shards of your life, and building something new with them. And that something, it might not be shiny, it might not be perfect. In fact, most of the time, it’s ragged and painful. But it’s yours, and it’s all that counts.

As he silently makes his way back into his bedroom, Kevin thinks that they’re not half bad at it, considering.    

 

_fin_


End file.
